by Karma Brown
use it tomorrow— and with her rotary hand blender beat the
white until it formed glossy but soft peaks. Squeezing lemon juice
into the egg whites, Nellie added a heaping tablespoon of sugar
and stirred it all together until it was smooth enough to drink.
“I’m going to take a bath,” Nellie said after handing Richard
the albumen drink. “If you need anything else, just holler.”
Richard grimaced as he sipped the white foam from the
glass. He was pale, and a thin sheen of sweat clung to his face,
beading at his hairline and above his upper lip. He had loosened
his belt and tie and definitely appeared quite unwell.
“Thank you, baby,” he said, his voice thin and reedy from
pain. “Take your time. I’m fine here.”
After retrieving her robe from her bedroom closet, Nellie went
into the bathroom and ran a bath. Locking the door, she un‑
dressed and glanced at herself in the mirror, critically taking stock of her various parts. Flat stomach, nothing growing inside to
stretch it out. Breasts high and full, nipples erect with the chill of being out from the warmth of her brassiere. Her skin was smooth,
slightly tanned and freckled where she hadn’t covered it during
gardening. Nellie slid into the bath water and positioned each foot on either side of the tap. She shimmied close to the faucet so her
knees bent deeply and the stream of water hit directly between her
legs. As the water caressed Nellie in ways Richard never did, the
tension built in her abdomen. A fluttery feeling took over her body, and her limbs began to tingle. Nellie’s body soon tensed under the
water and she shuddered from head to toe. She let her head drop
back so her hair fanned out around her, the noises she made
drowned out by the rushing water.
Richard was expectedly heartbroken when she told him ten days
later— after she scrubbed another lipstick stain out of another
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shirt collar— she had lost the baby, and his uncharacteristic tears both invigorated and saddened her. She didn’t want to be the
sort of wife who lied to her husband, especially about such a
thing as this, but he had given her no choice. Besides, her guilt
was allayed by her belief that she would fall pregnant soon
enough. They would have their child and Jane (or whoever re‑
placed her) and her god‑ awful lipstick would be forgotten.
Richard didn’t ask many questions this time, remembering
the horror of the bloodied towels from Nellie’s miscarriage,
only, “Are you certain?” She said she was but promised to make
an appointment with the doctor. Instead, she went to Black’s
Drugs, the pharmacy in Scarsdale, and perused the tubes of lip‑
stick, pausing at the bright red ones, wondering what kind of
woman believed she had a right to another’s husband. Nellie
finally settled on a soft seashell pink tube, which she purchased
along with a cold bottle of Coca‑ Cola, her fingertips leaving
imprints on the frosty green glass, not dissimilar to the finger‑
prints Richard had left on her arm.
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Woman’s sexual response is so general and diffused that fre-
quently she does not even know that she is being aroused, and
even more frequently is quite unaware that her behavior is
arousing the boy beyond the boundaries which she herself would
wish to maintain.
— Evelyn Duvall and Reuben Hill, When You Marry (1953)
Alice
JuNe 11, 2018
G eorgia finally answered the attorney’s pointed question.
“Look, I knew Alice could handle James Dorian. I never would
have put her in that position if I thought otherwise.”
To that point Alice reiterated that Georgia knew exactly what
and who James Dorian was, because they had discussed the issue
on multiple occasions. In fact, when Georgia first assigned Alice
to James it came with a not‑ so‑ subtle warning: “He likes his
booze and young women who are not his wife.”
After Alice shared this quote, the room was silent for a mo‑
ment, and then everyone was talking at once. Georgia called Alice
histrionic and childish and implied she was misremembering the
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conversation; the attorneys tersely asked Georgia if there had been other sexual assault complaints about James Dorian; Alice stated
to no one in particular that she was going to the washroom. Once
alone in the stall, she went to text Bronwyn again, but she’d left
her phone on the meeting room table.
When she returned, Georgia’s face was tense with frustration.
Her plan had been to pin this on Alice: the rogue employee,
whom she had fired for reasonable cause (breaking her nondis‑
closure), would take the fall. But now with sexual misconduct
hanging in the air, at a time when powerful men were finally
being exposed and branded with damning hashtags that ruined
reputations, Georgia had few options.
There would be others who came forward too, Alice knew, if
she went public— she was hardly unique when it came to James
Dorian’s wandering hands. Hell, Georgia probably had stories of
her own. Plus, he’d had a long career, both in academics and in
publishing, and the Wittington Group was not the first firm to
represent him. But even though it was tempting to nail James
Dorian and Georgia to the wall, Alice wasn’t naive. She would
not come out unscathed. There would be sympathy from some,
perhaps job offers at other firms with better scruples, and cer‑
tainly much discussion about predatory, powerful men and what
to do about them. There would also be the question of culpa‑
bility: Why did Alice wear short skirts for her meetings with James?
Why would she agree to be in a hotel room alone, knowing Dorian’s reputation? Why did she continue to serve him alcohol? How much vodka did she herself consume? What did she think would happen?
When Alice said she had no interest in taking things further,
Georgia seemed relieved. As for James and his lawsuit, he had
been quite drunk, but Alice suspected not enough to forget the
feel of her thigh against his uninvited fingers.
“I assume I’m free to go?” Alice asked, gathering her things.
“Yes,” the female attorney said, giving her a tight smile as
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she thanked her for coming in. “We’ll let you know if we have any
other questions. Is this the number where you can be reached?”
She read out her cell number, and Alice nodded. Georgia fol‑
lowed Alice out of the room, closing the door behind her as the
attorneys huddled over the
ir notes.
“I know the way out,” Alice said, not interested in spending
another minute with Georgia.
Her ex‑ boss nodded, tersely said, “Thanks for coming in
today.”
Alice started to walk away but turned back and flipped her
phone around so Georgia could see the screen. Georgia’s eyes
grew wide, moving from the screen to Alice’s face. Alice tapped
the red button to stop the recording and closed the voice memo
app, then tucked the phone safely into her purse. “In case you’re
ever unclear on the order of events today, let me know. I re‑
corded the entire meeting and am happy to refresh your memory
as needed.” Then she walked— head up, shoulders back— down
the hall and past the reception desk, ignoring Sloan’s half‑hearted goodbye and the bleeding blister on her heel, feeling more like
her old self than she had in months.
“How was your lunch?” Nate asked late that evening as Alice gently
flipped the tattered and food‑ drop‑ stained pages of Elsie Swann’s cookbook, looking for something to bake for coffee with Sally the
following day. Banana bread? Oatmeal bars? Chocolate chip cookies?
Alice was nervous about baking— it necessitated such precision—
so she needed something easy.
“What lunch?” Alice murmured, focused on a recipe for
sugar cookies. But the notation, Lousy, was written in what Alice now recognized as Elsie Swann’s hand. She turned the page and
glanced through a recipe for brownies.
“With your editor friend. Didn’t you go into the city today?”
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“Right, sorry.” She checked for cocoa in her pantry as Nate
opened the fridge for a bottle of sparkling water. No cocoa, so
no brownies, but she did have chocolate chips. “Good. It was a
quick coffee, actually, because she had another appointment. But
I had lunch afterward with Bronwyn.” The fib slipped out easily,
and as soon as it did Alice wished to take it back. To tell Nate the truth about how she’d spent her day, if for no other reason than
to share how satisfying it had been to one‑ up Georgia Wittington.
But revealing the truth about her day meant exposing the more
significant truth she’d been keeping from Nate. If she didn’t
confess, the shame of her professional misstep could remain
buried and, therefore, benign.
“Where did you go?” Nate asked, swigging water from the
glass bottle.
“Hmm?” Alice stood on her tiptoes, pulling out small boxes
and spice bottles. Baking soda. Cinnamon. Check. Cloves? She dragged a hand deeper into the pantry until her fingers pulled
out the remaining bottles at the back of the cupboard. Cream
of tartar. Another cinnamon. Bingo. Ground cloves. “Oh, we went to that Italian place. On Seventh.”
“Trattoria Dell’Arte?” Nate said. He groaned. “Did you
have the lobster carbonara? I miss the lobster carbonara.”
“Um, yes.” She gathered the bottles and boxes and bag of
chocolate chips on the counter, reread the recipe, avoided making
eye contact with Nate. Worried he’d see her flushed cheeks and
awkward smile and realize something was up.
“What are you making?” Nate asked, picking up the bottle
of ground cloves, apparently sensing nothing amiss.
“Chocolate chip cookies.” Alice opened drawers to pull out
everything else she needed. Bowl. Wooden spoon. Measuring
cup. She found a never‑ before‑ worn apron in one of the drawers
and put it over her head. “Can you grab the butter out of the
fridge?”
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It was as hard as a rock. She tried pressing her fingertips into
its surface, leaving shallow indentations in the foil wrapper as
the butter yielded little. “I’ll need to wait for this to soften.”
“You can grate it.”
“Like, with a cheese grater? Really?”
Nate nodded. “A trick I learned from my mom. Works like a
charm.”
“Huh, who knew?” She took the cheese grater out of the
dishwasher— the only new appliance in the kitchen— and got to
work, following the recipe in the cookbook precisely.
“I’ve never heard of putting cloves in chocolate chip cookies,”
Nate said, watching her measure and add and stir. “Where did
you get the recipe?”
“From that cookbook in the basement.” Alice kept her eyes
on the page. “I’m having coffee with Sally in the morning, and
I don’t want to show up empty‑handed.”
“Look at you, baking cookies from scratch for our elderly
neighbor. I think the suburbs are agreeing with you, babe.”
Nate was pleased Alice was making an effort, reading into this
sudden swing to domesticity from a woman who had previously
complained if she had to do more than open a can of soup. He
wrapped his arms around her waist from behind and planted a
kiss on her neck, murmuring how sexy she looked in the apron.
“If you make me mess up these measurements you’re going
to be eating a lot of terrible cookies,” Alice said, shifting away, but affording him a smile.
She pressed the slippery butter against the grater’s sharp
holes, careful to keep her knuckles out of the way. “Meant to
ask, how did you make out today without your laptop?”
“What?” Nate frowned, focused on his buzzing phone.
“Your laptop. You left it at home?” The grating trick worked
beautifully, the shards of butter piling up inside the metal tri‑
angle.
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“Oh, right.” He scrolled through his screen for a moment,
then tucked his phone in his back pocket. “I was in meetings
most of the day, but we used Drew’s to study.”
“Do I know Drew?” Alice ran through the faces of Nate’s
colleagues but came up blank. She put the grater in the sink and
rinsed her buttered fingers under warm water.
Nate shook his head. “She’s only been there for a couple of
months.”
“Drew is a woman?”
“Yeah, like Drew Barrymore.”
Alice wiped her still‑ oily fingers on a piece of paper towel.
“Does she look like Drew Barrymore?”
He smirked, swatted at her behind. “No, she does not.”
“Okay, get out of here. I need to finish these cookies before
I fall asleep into this grated butter.” It was nearly 11:30 p.M. and Nate had been home for only half an hour, which was typical
these days between work and preparing for his upcoming exam.
“Okay, okay,” Nate said, kissing her cheek as he walked by
and into the living room. The light went on and the floorboards
creaked as he moved through the room, settling onto the couch
with his study notebooks.
She scooped the grated butter into the bowl, measured the
olate chips. As she did her belly fluttered as she thought back to
her meeting with Georgia, who was probably still shocked by
how much she’d underestimated Alice.
The call from the Wittington Group’s attorney had come
a few hours earlier, around dinnertime. Alice was finishing a
tomato‑and‑cheese sandwich alone in the kitchen, as Nate
wouldn’t be home until much later. She didn’t answer the call
but let it go to voice mail, checking it once she had a glass of
wine in hand. The attorney’s message informed her that James
Dorian would not be going forward with the lawsuit, and the
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matter was closed. She left her number, but Alice deleted the
message.
Now, hours later, distracted by her internal postmortem
about the meeting and her relief about James Dorian, as well as
not burning Sally’s cookies, Alice didn’t notice that the chill in
the house had abated— her cardigan, resting over the chair at
her writing desk, where it had been since the day before, no
longer needed.
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Don’t keep your sweetest smiles and your best manners for
outsiders; let your husband come first.
— Blanche Ebbutt, Don’ts for Wives (1913)
Alice
JuNe 12, 2018
S hortly after midnight, moments after the cookies came out of the oven, Alice and Nate had argued. And not just a short‑
lived and snappish argument, but the sort that makes a couple
go to bed in silence with backs to each other, a chasm of pur‑
poseful space between them. It started when Nate came into the
kitchen to make a coffee, where Alice was transferring the hot
cookies to a cooling rack, and let out an irritable sigh.
“What’s up?” Alice asked, glancing up from the cookie tray.
“Nothing,” he said, his tone cagey. “Tired, I guess.”
“Me too,” she replied. “I’m going up the second I get this
done.”
“It’s just— ” He sighed again, and again Alice moved her focus
from cookies to Nate, waiting for him to finish the sentence.